by John Harvey
How long did it take to smother a four-year-old with a pillow, stab a grown woman to death?
He could have been back in his Newcastle hotel, back in his room, by six. Six thirty, latest. Between eight thirty and nine, he had called round at his parents' house to say his good-byes. "We'll come up and see you soon," his mother quoted him as saying, "the three of us."
Lynn pushed back her chair, closed her eyes, tried to conjure back the man she'd spoken to by the canal, trim, controlled, so genuine-sounding when he spoke of his feelings for Christine Foley and her daughter. She wondered at what stage in his relationship with Christine he had begun to see the possibility of it as something else? At which point had he started thinking, scheming, undermining, possibly, a relationship that was already on its way out? Whatever was going on between himself and Christine, that had nothing to do with her breaking up with Tony, no bearing on it at all.
Lynn found that hard to believe.
But could she believe that Schofield, rather than lose what he had manoeuvred himself to gain, would commit murder? Cold, calculating murder at that?
She tried to imagine the scene in which Christine had tried to explain to him, as nicely as she could, mindful of his feelings, that maybe they'd been a bit hasty, living together so soon after she and Tony had split up. Perhaps if they took a break from one another, just for a little while, so she could get her head round things…
She tried to picture Dan Schofield's reaction, what he might say or do if all of his calm and reasoned arguments came to nothing.
"If I can't fucking have you, no other bastard will!"
Would he say that? Would he snap?
Could he act upon those words?
Luckily, it wasn't for her to decide. Enough that she could establish motive, possible cause, the logistics of opportunity. Enough to put Schofield's alibi under further scrutiny, bring him back in for questioning. The ultimate decision, guilty or not guilty, was not up to her.
Lynn passed on her findings to the SIO in charge of the case and, later that afternoon, sat down with him and four of his detectives, talking through the whys and wherefores; Lynn careful not to overplay her hand and give any of the other officers cause to be resentful. She was on her way back from this session when she saw Stuart Daines in the corridor near her office door.
"Lurking?" Lynn said.
"Not at all."
"Hardly accidental."
"I've been waiting for you to call."
"What about?"
"Your witness, you remember? Andreea Florescu."
"What about her?"
"You were arranging for us to go and see her."
"I've been busy."
"So I hear."
"So you hear?"
"Some kind of break in that double murder, mother and daughter."
"How did you-"
Daines treated her to his disarming smile. "What is it? Ear to the ground? Ear to the wall? Either way, I've found it pays. In-formation-you never know when it's going to come in useful."
"And that's what you're hoping to get from Andreea? Information?"
"Hopefully."
"That might or might not be useful?"
The smile changed to something more sympathetic, caring. "Look, I appreciate what you've told me, about her being nervous and everything. I wouldn't be pushing this if I didn't think it might lead somewhere, believe me."
"All right," Lynn said, "but I can't contact her directly. It has to be through a friend. It may take a couple of days to set up."
"That's fine. I'll keep my diary flexible and wait for your call." He hesitated. "Kelvin Pearce-nothing there, I suppose?"
"You know damn well there isn't," Lynn said. "And if there were, you'd've probably heard before me."
Daines was chuckling as he walked away.
Back at her desk, Lynn found herself wondering exactly who Daines's contacts were, how high they ran, whom he might have spoken to in order to find out about the twist in the Bestwood investigation so soon.
And why so interested in her and what she was doing? Was it because she was his conduit to Andreea and he had a vested interest in knowing where the witnesses in the Zoukas case were? Or was there something else? Some other link in the chain, another brick in the tower he was constantly building and rebuilding? And to what effect, what cause?
After only a little hesitation, she looked up the number she had for Andreea's friend, Alexander Bucur, and began to dial.
Eighteen
Two more days. The temperature rose, then fell back down. There were portents of storms, banks of cloud shouldering in from the Atlantic. Background checks into Howard Brent's business affairs led nowhere, and when his car was pulled over for the second time in three days, he made an official complaint about police intimidation. Kelvin Pearce seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Brought in for questioning, Dan Schofield retreated behind a series of denials, braced by several terse no comments and an increasing reliance on his solicitor to intervene. Staff at the hotel where he'd stayed, friends and relatives were all being questioned again. Billy Alston's low-level drug dealing had indeed, it transpired, depended on an arrangement with a Derby-based dealer named Richie-Richie, not Ritchie-and there had been words exchanged between them, Richie telling Alston he'd put a bullet in his brain if he held out on him again. Telling him in front of half a dozen witnesses, three of whom, surprisingly, were apparently willing to say so under oath. Richie himself, however, was proving difficult to find. According to one report, he was in Glasgow, visiting an old girlfriend; according to another, he was in the Chapeltown area of Leeds.
Investigations continued.
Pearce. Schofield. Richie.
The first arrangement Lynn had made to see Andreea clashed with a meeting Daines was due to attend at New Scotland Yard.
"How about the day after?" Daines suggested. "Morning. I'll be down in London, anyway. Staying over."
They met at Leyton underground station, a false promise of sun behind flat grey cloud as Lynn stepped out on to the High Road, Daines already there and waiting, cup of takeout coffee in his hand.
"Here." He handed it towards her. "I've had mine."
Lynn shook her head. "No, thanks."
"Wise," he said. "Poor as piss." And dumped it in the first bin they passed.
The main street was a mixture of newsagents and convenience stores, fish bars and Internet cafes, hairdressers, fashion shops and saunas; butchers advertising halal meat and four small chickens for?4.99, chemists and dry cleaners; Pound Plus discount centres and motor factors, cash-and-carry wholesalers and secondhand furniture stores; the offices of the African and Caribbean Disablement Association and the Somali Bravenese Action Group, the Refugee Advice Centre and the Leyton Conservative Club.
Signs in shop windows were written in Urdu or Farsi, Bosnian or Serbian, Greek or Polish or poorly spelt English. A poster featuring a smiling, scantily dressed girl promised a Polish Party at one of the local pubs each and every Saturday, ten till late.
They walked for fifteen, twenty minutes, barely talking, following the route Lynn had Multimapped before leaving, until, just past Leyton Midland Road overground station, they turned into the first of several tightly packed parallel roads of small terraced houses. Two more turnings, right and left, and they stopped outside a house with a pebble-dash exterior which, some years ago, had been painted a shade of bilious acid yellow, grimy patterned net at the downstairs windows, mismatched curtains higher up. A bicycle with a flat rear tyre was chained to what remained of the iron railing alongside the front door.
After a brief hesitation, Lynn rang the uppermost of two bells.
A pause, and then the sound of feet approaching.
Alexander Bucur was tall, willowy, fair-haired, handsome-cautious until Lynn showed him identification and Daines did the same. He smiled then as, introducing himself, he stepped back to invite them in. Free newspapers, fliers and unwanted mail leaned in ramshackle piles again
st the side wall. Vinyl floor covering petered out short of the stairs, which were bare save for the overlapping stains of spilt food and drink and dust which had collected at the edges in grey whorls.
The room he led them into was crowded and small: a settee which was obviously used as a bed, an improvised desk that held a computer, screen and printer, a table that was busy with books and papers and leftover breakfast things, several chairs, more books on makeshift shelves, clothes drying in front of an oil heater in the corner, a poster for a forthcoming Romanian film festival pinned to the wall above a small colour photograph of a child that Lynn had seen before-Andreea's daughter, Monica.
"If you like, I can make tea," Bucur offered.
"Don't bother," Daines said.
"Thank you," Lynn said, "that would be nice."
"Very well," Bucur said. The door to the small, narrow kitchen was open at his back.
"Andreea," Daines said. "Is she here?"
Bucur gestured towards the other, closed, door. "She is in the bedroom. She has been sleeping. She will not be long." His English, not strongly accented, was clipped but clear.
Lynn sat on one of the chairs; Daines went across to the window and looked down onto the street. The only sounds, those from the kitchen aside, were of a plane passing quite low overhead, on its way perhaps to London City Airport, and, closer to, a Silverlink train pulling into Midland Road station.
"So what are we going to do?" Daines asked testily, looking towards the bedroom door. "Let her sleep all bloody day?"
"Be patient," Lynn said.
Daines mouthed something she didn't catch.
Bucur brought in mugs of tea, milk in a carton, and an old metal container marked SUGAR.
"She's not joining us?" Daines said.
"I'll see."
Bucur went into the bedroom and closed the door behind him.
"Some pantomime," Daines said, stirring sugar into his tea.
They could hear voices, hushed but urgent, from behind the door.
"I think she is afraid to come out," Bucur said when he returned.
"Afraid of what, for God's sake?" Daines said, letting his exasperation show. He was jittery-unusually so, Lynn thought-and she wondered if this was really just about the simple question-and-answer he'd suggested.
"Let me talk to her." Lynn got to her feet. "See what I can do."
She knocked, said her name, and went in.
Andreea was sitting on the unmade bed, her back towards the door, her face turned away. She had cut her hair short and dyed it a strange shade of almost bluish black. Each time Lynn had seen her since she had witnessed the murder, she had been less and less attractive and, Lynn thought, deliberately so.
She wondered if she and Alexander were a couple and decided they were not. Speaking Andreea's name, she touched her gently on the shoulder.
"What's the matter?"
There were dark shadows around Andreea's eyes, the skin across her cheekbones stretched tight; her pallor was that of paper left too long in a drawer.
"I don't know," Andreea said. "I am tired. This job, cleaning, at night. I have only been home a few hours. And always it is difficult to sleep."
"I'm sorry," Lynn said.
"Before," Andreea said with a weak smile, "it was easier before."
Lynn said nothing.
"This other man, I have to talk to him?"
"There's nothing to be frightened of. He just wants to ask a few questions, get you to look at some photographs. That's all. And I'll be there. Come on." She took her hand. "Come on, let's get it over and done."
"Wait. Please. A moment." She looked at the mirror resting on an old chest of drawers against the wall. "You can go now. A few minutes, I will come."
"Okay," Lynn said, and smiled.
"She'll be right in," she said, going back into the room.
"Good of her," Daines said.
"She's tired," Lynn explained. "Exhausted, by the look of her."
"She works nights at a big hotel," Bucur said. "In the West End. Near Park Lane. Twelve hours, six nights a week."
"When she comes in," Lynn said, speaking to Daines, "be nice."
With a small rattle of the handle, the bedroom door opened and Andreea stepped into the room. She had brushed her hair as best she could and put makeup on her face, the lipstick too bright, the lines around her downcast eyes too dark.
When she looked up and saw Stuart Daines by the window, she gave a small jump of recognition and, for a moment, her whole body seemed to tense.
"Andreea," Lynn said, moving quickly, "why don't you sit over here, at the table?"
If Daines himself had noticed, he gave no sign. Taking a seat alongside Andreea, he was charm itself. He was sorry she was tired, understood how hard she'd been working; it was good of her to make the time to help. He was interested, he told her, in any men she might have seen with Viktor Zoukas at the sauna in Nottingham and proceeded to show her a series of photographs.
Bucur went into the kitchen to make fresh tea.
At the tenth photograph, Andreea told him to stop.
"This man here," she said.
"You know him?"
"Yes."
In the picture, black-and-white, grainy, he was standing in a club doorway, the light from the neon sign illuminating his face, the scar that ran from close by his left eye down into the dark shadow of his beard. He seemed quite tall, though it was difficult to tell for sure, strong-looking, with a broad, thick neck and large, broad hands. He was dark-haired, wearing a dark suit with a pale shirt and dark tie.
"You saw him with Zoukas?" Daines said.
Andreea shook her head.
"I thought you just said-"
"My house. Where I lived in Nottingham. Before. He came there." She looked at Lynn. "I told you about him."
"The man with the knife."
"Yes. He make me get into his car, drive me somewhere, make me tell him what I have told the police about Nina. And Viktor. He tell me he will kill me if I say anything bad about Viktor. Anything more than I tell police already." She looked towards Lynn again. "Now he will know. He will know-"
"Andreea," Lynn said. "I keep telling you, it's all right. You're safe here."
"This man," Daines said, "did you see him with Viktor Zoukas?"
"No. No, never."
"You're sure?"
"Yes, of course."
"Not at the sauna or anywhere?"
"No."
"And when he threatened you, was he on his own?"
"No. There was someone else. In the car, driving the car."
"Describe him. What did he look like?"
"I didn't see."
"You must have seen something."
"No. He was in the car. Driving the car. It was dark."
"Okay. All right. Let's look at the rest of these."
There was nobody else that Andreea recognised; not definitely. One or two about whom she was uncertain, but so much so as to be of little use. Daines asked her more questions about Zoukas, but there was little she could tell him. Little that she knew.
After just over half an hour, he was through. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you for your cooperation. It's appreciated."
A few minutes more, words of thanks to Alexander Bucur for the tea, a quick exchange of glances between Lynn and Andreea, an assurance from Daines that the man in the photograph wouldn't be troubling her again, and they were back out on the street.
"Worth the time and trouble?" Lynn asked, as they walked towards the High Road.
"Depends. Not as fruitful as I'd have hoped, but interesting nonetheless."
"The man she recognised, what's his name?"
"Ivan Lazic. He's a Serb. He was a member of the Serbian security forces between '96 and '98, when he was captured by the KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army. Instead of standing him up against a wall and shooting him, they seem to have cut him some kind of deal. He turned up on our radar in '99-Customs and Excise, that is. Seems to have been in cahoots
with the Albanians ever since."
"But now he's back out of the country, like you said?"
Daines gave her a look. "I've no idea. But I didn't want your pal Andreea throwing another tantrum."
Lynn gave it a few seconds. "Andreea," she said, "had you seen her before?"
"No. Never. Why d'you ask?"
She didn't reply.
They both took the Central line as far as Bank and changed; Daines was taking the train from St. Pancras, Lynn catching the other branch of the Northern line as far as Kentish Town. She had a friend, she told him, a Detective Inspector stationed at Holmes Road, and they were going to have lunch before Lynn, herself, took the train back to Nottingham.
"Thanks for all your help," Daines said, as passengers pushed round them on the Bank platform.
"No problem." And Lynn moved off into the crowd.
At Camden Town, she switched platforms and reversed her journey; Tottenham Court Road to Leyton, fewer than ten stops. She'd called her friend, Jackie Ferris, feeling paranoid for doing so, but wanting to cover her tracks, and then Alexander Bucur also, needing to make certain Andreea would still be there.
Bucur was outside when she arrived, one leg cocked over his bicycle. "I have to go. Andreea is upstairs."
A smile and he was away.
Andreea had changed into a different top and reapplied her makeup; anxiously, she looked past Lynn to make sure no-one was following.
"Daines," Lynn said, "the man I was with earlier. You knew him, didn't you? You'd seen him before."
Andreea hesitated. "Yes," she said eventually. "Yes, yes."
"Okay." Lynn took a seat beside her on the settee. "Tell me where."
"Wait, please." Andreea reached for a pack of cigarettes, went across to the window and opened it quite wide. "Alexander, he does not like me to smoke here," she explained, taking a lighter from the pocket of her jeans.
"It was in London," she said, after the first drag. "Two, yes, two years ago."
"But how?"
"When I came to his country first, I was staying with some friends in Wembley. That was when I first met Viktor. One of the girls, she was working at a club that was run by one of Viktor's friends. Lap dancing, you know? She said she would see if she could get me a job there, too. The owner, he told me I had to dance for his friend, Viktor. He said it was my-the word is 'audition'?"